Blogger silently made a change in the layout section

Edit: Everything turned back to normal a while ago. Don't know when, just checked it.

Today, I tried to make some changes on one of my blog's layout on blogspot. I noticed that it was not possible to put something under the header. First, I thought that this was a weakness in my hand-brain coordination. Only a couple of seconds later I realized that I am healthy but there was a change in the layout drag and drop functionality.

I am trying to guess the reasons for that change. Maybe this functionality is abused by some bloggers, who knows? Being able to put something under the header is a good way to bring a different aura to your blog. You could add additional navigation, flickr streams, etc.

On the other hand, when you do this, your blog looks like different than a blog on the first look. Let's confess, blogs do not aim to replace websites. They simply are weblogs.

Anyway, I am not going to defend this decline in functionality. This is a downgrade, a step back in blogger layouts. Maybe this is something temporary. We'll see.

What blogspot lacks

There has been now nearly one month that I am using blogspot as my primary blogging software and I have a couple of ideas that I would like to share.

The page layout system is nice and very usable. It is so easy and usable that I try not to mess with my template and make too much changes to it. Just because I don't want to get very far away from the layout functionality of blogger.

Issues of the layout system is that it is not conditional. There are no conditional controls over the layout. By conditional control, I mean options of page items about whether they are to be shown on front page or item pages, archive pages etc. This is important and very usable functionality.

By the way, like there was in the old blogger, new blogger also have conditional tags for templates. So, you can still choose what to show and what not to show on your blog's different pages. You can do many variations, you can be very creative with tags. However the essence of what I say here is plain usability. Usability for people who are not coders and who are not familiar with conditional logic, html or xhtml or any simple scripting at all.

There is one conditional function in the layout though. It is in the blog section. When you select to add adsense into your blog posts, there is a control about how to show it, like: every post, every two post, every three post etc.

However, the exact placement of the ad unit is still not selectable. People who get the hang of proper ad placement would understand what I mean. It is determinant on click through rates.

Apart from those, blogspot made a long way. It is developing new functionality step by step. This is why I am now here and not on WordPress as a primary blogging software.